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Topic: F-One Swing (Read 5202 times)

I gave in to a growing interest and bought one of the F-one Swing wings today. I could only find a 3.5 but that is a great size for us. First reaction out of the bag was, holy shit is this thing light. Scale time. The Swing is 3 lbs even on my bathroom scale. Damn! Our smaller 3 meter Duotone and SPG are 4.6 and 4.8 lbs respectively. I wonder what the 2.8 weighs. I am not yet sure how important weight is (as these are all relatively very light)...but I sure am interested to see. Tomorrow looks solid so we may get to find out . It also came with a cool little (3 foot) wrist leash that is just long enough to reach the back strut handle (plus about 6 inches of slack). I Ordered the rest of the sizes as well. More soon...

If that 3.5 wing can fly my 190# a$$ on marginal wind you should be able to foil on it in your conditions. Would be nice to read performance comparison with your duotone

Whoah! We had great (high 20's to low 30's) wind with bigger bumps yesterday and fairly steady. My first reaction after this one session is that this 3.5 has amazing grunt and lifts like a much bigger wing. Even so it stays very well behaved and spills air on demand. It is incredibly light. It is incredibly light. See that? I said that twice. It has a notably deeper pocket than our other wings. If I had a 2.8 Swing in the car I would have come back for it. I thought that size was going to be for Chan only but we are going to need the 2.2 as well . My first day experience was very positive but I want to get this out in more modest winds and see if my first reaction holds true.

You wrote that this is foiling you in marginal winds. Based on yesterday, it definitely feels like it would. What are you considering marginal? When I got off the water I told Chan that I though I might be able to use the 3.5 in 15-20 but I was still in a mild state of shock or as millenials would say, trying to process.

Whoah! We had great (high 20's to low 30's) wind with bigger bumps yesterday and fairly steady. My first reaction after this one session is that this 3.5 has amazing grunt and lifts like a much bigger wing. Even so it stays very well behaved and spills air on demand. It is incredibly light. It is incredibly light. See that? I said that twice. It has a notably deeper pocket than our other wings. If I had a 2.8 Swing in the car I would have come back for it. I thought that size was going to be for Chan only but we are going to need the 2.2 as well . My first day experience was very positive but I want to get this out in more modest winds and see if my first reaction holds true.

You wrote that this is foiling you in marginal winds. Based on yesterday, it definitely feels like it would. What are you considering marginal? When I got off the water I told Chan that I though I might be able to use the 3.5 in 15-20 but I was still in a mild state of shock or as millenials would say, trying to process.

We have a 5.0 Duotone and were thinking of getting an F-One Swing 3.5 but now that I read this we might be better off with a 2.8 Swing???We don't want to much overlap but a gap that is too big is also not good.

What are you considering marginal? When I got off the water I told Chan that I though I might be able to use the 3.5 in 15-20 but I was still in a mild state of shock or as millenials would say, trying to process.

A consistent 15 is marginal for us. From next month and all through Fall we usually get storms and that means 30's-60's. After feeling the power of that wing at 15 I would not go with a 3.5 when a storm comes for a visit. a 2.2 might be in our future.

What are you considering marginal? When I got off the water I told Chan that I though I might be able to use the 3.5 in 15-20 but I was still in a mild state of shock or as millenials would say, trying to process.

A consistent 15 is marginal for us

Using a 3.5 for 15 would be a dream. I have been using a 5 for anything under 20 and 4 for 20+. My 5 is terrific but it is a big feeling wing. If I could get into that territory on this paperweight 3.5 I would be beyond stoked.

Watching that video I realized what I am doing wrong. I need to be listening to poppy punk. Yesterday I had Bell-bottom Blues in my head. I am pretty sure that Clapton is keeping me slow. Do you want to see me crawl across the floor...

Some more reactions after 3 days on the Swing 3.5. It is indeed more powerful than our other wings. It lifts more and more forward (more front hand). That is pretty cool because it sets you up to weight that front foot and it keeps the sheet action very light.

Unlike the Duotone, it is no problem switching back and forth from the SPG to the Swing and it is very interesting to do so. The Duotone has an odd behavior in that it flies wildly rightside up (from the leash or the leading edge handle). That requires different management than the other wings which are very stable rightside up.

There are only 3 handles on the Swing which I like a lot. I am now looking at a lot of the wings that are out there and seeing a bunch of handles that I could never see using. I bet that will change going forward. On the Swing I basically use two handles (the front and the back) and really only use the inner back handle for arranging starts. There is a learning curve with the front handle because when you are doing transitions your new hand has to replace the old hand in the single front handle. That took me a few tries .

The mini leash is really cool as well. I am sold on that. These little things matter a lot. I had been using a short leash off of a waist belt but this is too short for that and is designed for the wrist. The best thing is that the wrist collar is set up for easy wrist slip through and tension. Trying to get a standard Velcro leash with two free ends tight with one hand is tricky and often ends up in a loose leash. This minor design tweak is really welcomed. I am finding that I can usually just tug the leash once and go straight to the front strut handle. The wing is light and balanced enough to do that. This avoids reeling in a longer leash and more importantly I often don't need to use the leading edge handle at all. That speeds up starts a lot which is really nice when the swell is knocking you around a lot (and it has been ).

Here is the leash I found to be perfect for us. Like you have found, the cuff that you just slip over the wrist is ideal. This leash has another cool feature where the leash to cuff attachment can bend 90 degrees. Way less annoying.

We have the luxury of shopping at the worlds largest surf shop (Ron Jon) here in Cocoa Beach. They probably have 50 body board leashes to chose from.

Yeah that is the collar type and it is awesome. I forgot to mention that the Swing leash is a thin woven leash that has a slight elastic inner so that it gives about 8 inches before hard stop. It is extremely light and flexes 360 degrees. It eliminates all of the hard plastic parts and metal joints. It has no coils so it is as minimal as it gets. Becuase they are including one with each wing you can keep one attached to each wing. One less thing at setup . I know that I am waxing on about the leash but leashes were my least favorite part of wingsurf gear and this is a really good fit for me. I have also settled on a 6' FCS freedom leash for the board. https://www.surffcs.com/products/fcs-freedom-leash . This is also really minimal. I have been using that on a waist belt but I may ditch the belt now.